Speaker
Description
Silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) are increasingly replacing traditional
photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) due to several advantages, including high
sensitivity to single photons, resistance to strong magnetic fields,
excellent spatial resolution, high fill factor, and radiopurity. Widely
used in medical physics, their adoption is growing in rare-event
experiments such as dark matter searches and in high-energy physics.
A novel infrastructure to support the packaging and integration of
large-area, low-noise Silicon Photo Multiplier detectors is operational at
the Gran Sasso National Laboratory (INFN): the NUOVA OFFICINA ASSERGI
(NOA), an ISO-6 clean room devoted to the assembly and testing SiPM arrays
at both room temperature and in cryogenic conditions. It is equipped with
cutting edge packaging machines and special tools for the manipulations,
quality controls and early diagnostics of the devices, in a dust
controlled environment. Currently NOA is performing the large-scale
production of more than 21 m2 of SiPM based Photo Detection Units for the
DarkSide-20k (DS-20k) experiment that will be integrated in the optical
planes of the detector Time Projection Chamber. We will report the main
steps of the DS-20k PDU production workflow as demonstration of the high
potential of the NOA facility that in perspective will be open to all the
research communities interested in such technologies.